This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Don't look now, but within nearly all of us resides the selfish soul of a 3-year-old. Do you doubt me? Riddle me this, then. Apple releases a faultless music player in the form of the iPod, and what do you hear? "But I want my iPod to do more! Now! Gimme, gimme, gimme…."

And thank goodness, say I, that this is the case. Without consumers' constant desire for bright shiny objects, the world's economy would crumble, and Apple's engineers would spend their days cracking open older iPods to replace their exhausted batteries.

This ceaseless carping not only keeps dollars, drachmas, and deutschemarks circulating, but also drives companies such as Apple to produce the Next Big Thing. In the case of the iPod, that NBT is a device that not only holds and plays thousands of tunes, but displays scads of pictures as well. This is the iPod Photo.

A New iPod or No?

Following the October 26, 2004, announcement of the iPod Photo, many people were confused about what wonders the iPod Photo held. Before I dip into the small details of the device, let me make a few points clear.

Some of the Same

In regard to its form and its music- and data-handling capabilities, the iPod Photo is virtually indistinguishable from a fourth-generation iPod. It bears the same controls as this iPod; it transfers data the same way over the same FireWire and USB 2.0 connections; its menu structure is very similar; it handles contacts, calendars, and notes just like its fourth-generation sibling; and until you switch the thing on, it looks exactly like a fourth-generation iPod. Unlike earlier iPods, however, it does require iTunes 4.7 or later.

Expectations vs. Reality

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod Photo, he quickly dispelled the notion that Apple had any interest in developing a video iPod (at least in developing one at that time). Though he felt that few people would be interested in viewing video on his beloved player, he had no doubt that it would be a wonderful platform for displaying pictures. What he didn't spell out is how necessary a personal computer is to making the transaction between iPod and digital camera work.

Many had hoped that an iPod with photo capabilities would be able to download pictures directly from a digital camera and then display those pictures on the iPod—thus making the device a useful tool for photographers who want to preview scads of pictures in the field without having to swap media cards or drag along a laptop. This is not that iPod.

The iPod Photo requires that its pictures be converted and stored in special files. Currently, the iPod Photo is incapable of performing either of these jobs. Rather, iTunes 4.7 or later converts the files, stores them in the proper format, and then downloads the photos to the iPod. As I explain later in the chapter, although you can copy full-resolution images to the iPod, as well as transfer images via a device such as Belkin's Media Reader for iPod, these images won't display on your iPod until they're copied to your computer, converted, and then transferred back to the iPod via iTunes.

It Comes in Colors

Though you'd have some difficulty differentiating a 40 GB fourth-generation iPod and a 40 GB iPod Photo when the two are switched off and placed side by side, once you turn them on, the difference becomes startlingly clear. The iPod's 2-inch, 65,536-color liquid crystal display is glorious (Figure 3.1). Despite the iPod's name, it uses colors in ways other than flashing photographs across its screen. Its interface sports a look similar to the blue "Aqua" theme used by Apple's Mac OS X operating system. The battery indicator has been colorized, so a full battery appears green, and a nearly drained battery shows red. The device's calendars and games have been colored to make them easier to read and play. The iPod's Volume and Timeline thermometers are a soothing blue, as are the stars on the Rating screen. Songs that have embedded album art can display album covers when played. And, of course, this iPod can play your pictures singly or in a slideshow.

Figure 3.1 With grayscale pictures, it's hard to see just how colorful and crisp the iPod Photo's screen is. Take my word for it—it is. Photo courtesy of Apple Computer.

But not all of this iPod's graphic enhancements come from color. Apple also employed a thinner font—similar to what's used on the iPod mini—that gives the menus a cleaner look. And to make it easier to discern your music, entries that don't fit on one of the iPod Photo's screens (an entry in the Artists or Songs screen, for example) scroll across the screen in ticker-tape fashion when selected. On other iPods, names that don't fit are cut short and end with an ellipsis—Mary Chapin Carp…, for example.

iPod Photo and Album Art

The iPod Photo can display album art, but it doesn't have to. The trick to switching album art on and off is iTunes 4.7's Display Album Artwork on Your iPod option (located in the Music tab of the iPod Preferences window). With this option on, the iPod will do what the option suggests: display album art for those files that have art embedded in them. When the option is off, no album art is displayed, though the art won't be removed from the file.

So given that files won't be any smaller when you disable album art, why do it? Displayed album art adds an extra click to navigating the iPod. On older iPods, when you click the Select button while a song is playing, you're taken to the Scrub screen. On an iPod Photo, clicking a Now Playing screen that displays artwork takes you to a window that shows you a full screen of artwork. Some people find clicking through this intermediate screen inconvenient. Turning off album art eliminates this step.

Television Network

Although the iPod Photo's ability to display pictures on its 2-inch display earns it a certain "gee-whiz" respect, showing pictures and slideshows on a pocket-packed device is hardly news to those who carry late-model cellular phones and PDAs. These devices are just as useful for boring the pants off your former friends with your summer-vacation slides.

Ah, but suppose that the iPod could also project those pictures on a television set. Let's see your Nokia do that, buddy. (No, really, let's not.) Yes, broadcasting slideshows to a TV is another of this iPod's charms. Apple helps this process along by including an AV cable that features two audio jacks and a composite video plug. String this cable between a TV and the iPod's specially engineered headphone port (engineered to output video, that is), and it's showtime! For higher-quality video, take advantage of the S-Video port on the back of the iPod Photo's bundled Dock (no S-Video cable is included, however).

Yes, the iPod does all this and a tiny bit more. Now that you're hip to its trip, let's examine how it performs these wondrous feats.